


School Nemeses 3

by magog_83



Series: School Nemeses [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magog_83/pseuds/magog_83
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin and Arthur are archenemies.  Optimistic young teacher Miss Slater thinks she can do something about that. Modern school!au.  First detention!</p>
            </blockquote>





	School Nemeses 3

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by Vensre. WIP.

When Miss Slater arrived at 3.40pm on the first afternoon she was not at all surprised to find Arthur sitting on the wall waiting, bouncing his football off the flagstones, and Merlin nowhere to be seen. It was in fact another three minutes before Merlin came charging up, still stuffing books into his schoolbag and gasping apologies as he skidded to a halt. Arthur, very pointedly, looked at his watch as Miss Slater unlocked the door and went inside. Merlin, equally pointedly, pushed in ahead of Arthur and let the door slam shut in his face.

The old library was in the original part of the school, a building only partly used now. Miss Slater had already explored as much as she was able since she’d been given the keys to the library, loving the long, silent room with its tall shadowy bookcases and the smell of old paper. Now she couldn’t resist unlocking the door with a bit of a flourish. Really, no-one but her seemed the slightest bit interested in this place, and it was nice to have _someone_ to show it to, even if her audience were here under duress.

“Here we are boys.” She stood aside and gestured them in. “This is where you will be working for the next few weeks.”

There was a rather unimpressed silence.

“What the hell is this place?” said Arthur at last.

“It’s a library Arthur,” piped up Merlin helpfully. “It’s where the intelligent people go.”

“That’s enough of that, thank you,” said Miss Slater quickly, before Arthur could even open his mouth to reply. “And while we’re on the subject, I expect you both to behave yourselves these next few weeks.” She looked at them both sternly. “There will be no fighting, no throwing of books, no stealing of anyone’s items of clothing and,” she looked at Arthur, “absolutely no soldering of anything whatsoever. Do I make myself clear?”

They both muttered something.

“Pardon?”

“Yes miss,” said Merlin a bit louder, followed somewhat unwillingly by Arthur.

“Good,” said Miss Slater. She put her hands on her hips. “Right then, we’d best get started.”

She’d told them to both bring old t-shirts to wear as it was likely to be dusty work. Arthur immediately dug an old football jersey out of his bag and started unbuttoning his shirt whilst Miss Slater kindly looked elsewhere to save anyone’s embarrassment. Not that Arthur seemed to care. Merlin, on the other hand, went to hide behind some bookshelves to change, earning himself a snort of derision from Arthur and likely a scathing comment if Miss Slater hadn’t been there. Nonetheless Arthur looked far too amused when Merlin finally emerged, ears a little red, wearing a faded blue t-shirt.

She directed them to the long table she’d already cleared, surrounded by piles of books and papers, some stacked haphazardly in boxes, others lying on the floor or still strewn on bookshelves. “Ok, I need one of you to start collecting these books together,” she indicated the piles, “and the other one to have a look through the books on the table. Anything that looks salvageable, put it in this crate.” She heaved a blue plastic crate onto the table. “If it’s clearly beyond hope, put it in this pile here and we’ll send them for recycling. Any first editions of Charles Dickens, please pass them to me.” She smiled at them both. Merlin raised a hand.

“Yes, Merlin?”

“Perhaps I’d better be the one to look through the books, miss. There might be some reading involved and I wouldn’t want Arthur to do anything that might make him uncomfor— _Ow!”_. He was abruptly cut off when Arthur smacked him with a nearby copy of _The Wildlife of the British Isles._

“Arthur!” Miss Slater snapped. “What did I say about misusing the books?”

“Sorry miss,” said Arthur, not sounding sorry at all.

“Right. You,” she pointed at Arthur, “start stacking some books and you,” she glared at Merlin, “be quiet and start reading.”

Then for a blessed half hour there was silence as they all worked, broken only by the occasional interested murmuring from Merlin as he leafed through a book or sheaf of papers and the sound of Arthur stacking books and dragging boxes down from the high shelves.

Miss Slater was just wondering if it might be a good idea to bring a radio in tomorrow, just to break up the quiet, when the largest spider she had ever seen crawled out of a crate, down over a book and across the table toward Merlin. Who promptly yelped and jumped up like his trousers were on fire, making it up and onto his chair with the kind of speed that would put an Olympic hurdler to shame, before he grabbed the nearest thing for balance - which just happened to be Arthur’s head

“OW! What, are you trying to scalp me? Get off!”

There was a moment of confusion during which Arthur managed to prise free Merlin’s death grip from his hair, and Merlin made some strange whimpering sounds, and then they were all left staring at the enormous spider that, admittedly, did not look all that threatening sitting placidly in the middle of the table.

There was a short silence, then, “You’re scared of spiders?” Arthur sounded like someone had just offered him the chance to play football for England.

“No!” said Merlin at once, clutching his book to his chest like a shield. Arthur smirked. “I’m not! It just, it came at me suddenly, I wasn’t expecting it to—”

“It’s alright,” said Miss Slater, recovering. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, I should have known there’d be a few about.” She looked around for a bit of paper. “I’ll get rid of it.” But Arthur was already there, sliding an old sheet of newspaper across the table and carefully scooping up the spider, before he equally carefully (and really, she ought to have seen this coming a mile away) flicked it straight at Merlin – who yelled and fell off his chair, knocking over Arthur’s neat pile of books and scrambling backwards trying to yank off his t-shirt.

For a moment Miss Slater was quite tempted to smack someone with a book herself.

“Merlin _calm down,_ it’s not even on you!” She pushed past Arthur, who was laughing so hard he looked in danger of asphyxiating himself, and tried to pull Merlin to his feet, nearly falling over him in the process as he kept swatting his t-shirt and looking about wildly for the spider (who had had the good sense to vanish).

When Merlin had finally been persuaded to stop hyperventilating (and to keep his t-shirt on) and Arthur had been reduced to sitting, still laughing weakly, on an upturned crate, Miss Slater took action. Merlin was sent to make a list of the books saved so far in the safety of the corridor and Arthur was given a very stern talking to that mainly involved Miss Slater threatening to schedule his detentions to coincide with football practice. By the time they left (separately – she thought it best) at five o’clock, Miss Slater was beginning to think that a week of litter duty didn’t seem like such a bad option after all.

* * *

The next day Merlin found three large house-spiders in his locker. Miss Slater only knew this because she heard the noise he made (she was very kindly not referring to it as a shriek) from the staffroom. It was almost as loud as the noise Arthur made when he burst out of the changing rooms two days later, half dressed, to find that someone had stapled his boxer shorts to the notice board by the Head Master’s office.

The End


End file.
